About the SPACE Team

 

Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland

Adele Commins - Head of Creative Arts, Media and Music

Musicologist Adèle Commins is Head of Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at DkIT. A graduate of NUI Maynooth with a PhD in musicology and first class honours degrees in Music and Irish and Higher Diploma in Education, she also holds an ALCM and LGSMD in piano performance. In addition to playing piano, she is an accomplished piano accordion player and soprano and is Musical Director of two local church choirs.

She is an elected member to the Council of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, a member of the Society for Music Education in Ireland National Committee, a member of Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) Ireland committee, a member of the Council of Heads of Music in Higher Education in Ireland and is also an active member of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the International Stanford Society. She has also acted as consultant for a number of bodies including QQI.

A member of the Creative Arts Research Centre at Dundalk, her primary research interests lie in music in Ireland and England during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular focus on the music of the British Musical Renaissance. Her doctoral work, 'Charles Villiers Stanford's Preludes for Piano op.163 and op.179: A Musicological Retrospective' examined the reception history of Charles Villiers Stanford and included a detailed analysis of his forty-eight Preludes for solo piano. She penned the article on Stanford in The Companion to Irish Music and has recently published an article in Brio on Stanford's Manuscript Collection. She has also contributed a number of articles on music in Ireland in the nineteenth century to the Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland in addition to working as an assistant style editor for this publication.

Recent conference presentations include papers which examined the influence of the First World War on Charles Villiers Stanford and the reception of Stanford and his music in the American press. Other research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning, music education, instrumental pedagogy, performance practice and music editing.

She was chair of the 7th Annual Conference of the Society for Music Education in Ireland Conference held at DkIT (2017) and chair of the conference committee of the 10th Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland held at DkIT (2012). She has presented her work in Ireland, England, France, Croatia, Norway, America and Australia and has completed lecture and performance tours of Scotland, America and Brazil with the DkIT Traditional Ensemble with performances also in France and Norway.